Chicks!

I piddled around and waited too long to order chicks. Sold out!

I should have realized, after hearing stories about seeds flying off the shelves in this poor economy, that the same would apply to small livestock.

But we found mystery chicks from the Cullman Tractor Supply store.



I think we have Leghorns, a Rhode Island Red, and Dominiques. Maybe.



They are cute, at any rate, although I suspect that a high percentage may be cockerels.



Fuzzy.



Wuzzy.

We put them in a pen outside one sunny day, to soak in sun and eat bugs and scratch around, but mostly they acted like it was just another ploy to try to kill them.



The female Muscovy was verrrry interested. Poor thing wants to be a mama so bad, but is too dumb to figure out how to sit on eggs correctly. Maybe we should have brought her some ducklings.

This is how much they grew in just a week:



That one on the far left and one other black chick have tails already, which says "male" to me, but I pray I'm wrong.



Look Ma, real feathers!

To buy the chicks, we had to sign a paper: name, address, phone, driver's license number! I considered yelling "No NAIS!" and running out the door, but I didn't. I hadn't felt Big Brother peering over my shoulder like that since we tried to drive up to view the local dam, and had our plates and license numbers recorded.

Lord knows what sort of watch list I'll be put on for buying chicks, visiting a dam, and buying Sudafed.



"I'll be watching you."

Spring, sprung.

It's bloodroot time!

Tempus est Sanguinaria canadensis.

Babelfish doesn't work for ancient languages, so that is possibly not correct latin.

But anyway, bloodroots are up!

Natural Graffiti

Fungi graffiti. (Spalting in tree trunk.)



Snail graffiti.



Insect scrollwork?

Cottontails

We've gone from snow to temps in the 70s in one week. Don't plant your tomatoes yet though, says our Extension guy; there's still more cold weather to come.


Divided heart-shaped rock that has nothing to do with this post.

I'll be at the Cottontails craft show this weekend at the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic center. So if you are local and have $6, come see me. If you come Friday morning, you may see a friend of mine too. Two blogging soapmakers for the price of one. And if tell me, "You said on your blog that you'd give me a 10% discount," then I will.

Snow! (Part 2)

Snow in pines.



Snow in beeches.



Now they look like Christmas Ferns!



Rabbit trail revealed.



Snow in swampy area.



Snow in other beeches.



Snow on Rudbeckia skeletons.



The Virginia Bluebells are over there - hope they're ok.



Deer tracks in snow. I have been wanting to track wild animals in the snow ever since we moved here. Unfortunately the snow was all gone by early afternoon, and not many animals had moved around in the morning.



Duck tracks in snow. (The chickens were afraid of the snow. They refused to come out of the coop! It was hilarious.)



Mystery tracks in snow! There is my gloved finger for size comparison. Now if I could only remember where I put the tracking book.

Snow!

The forecast was for two to four inches by daybreak.



The TV is full of snowmen and snowball fights and cantevenseethegrass, but here - not yet.

We had five inches of rain day before yesterday, so I'm thinking that the persistent puddles are melting all the snow.

It's still coming down though, so I've got my fingers crossed.